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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from CSV on behalf of Pete Church and has been added to the site with his permission. Pete….fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

I was fourteen when I joined the Home Guards. All my mates were three years older than me, so I lied about my age! Can you imagine I had a rifle at fourteen?! I was based in Bromley Road next to the police station — it was a territorial army base. We used to do training in Whitefoot Lane. It was army training for war-fare incase Germans landed. We had to do combat training, bayonet training, and ordinary army drills. It was hard — especially when you were only fourteen !

When I reached 17, in 1941, I joined the army. I was part of the General Service Corps, and went Belfast. This is where I did all my army training — it was much harder than the Home Guards. We were treated worst then prisoners — we had no sheets and itchy blankets! If you did anything wrong then the whole platoon suffered for it. They used to put you on a thing called ‘jankers’. This was the different type of punishments that would be given to you if you did something wrong. Every week we’d have kit inspection by the sergeant in charge of the platoon. We’d have to put all our uniform folded and in a line across the bed. If there was one uniform out of place by more than half a centimeter, he’d tip the bed up, shout at us and then give us ‘jankers’ for a week. This meant you were on a charge and they’d do things like making you go around and paint the coal white with a toothbrush — and anything else that was black! Then the next person to be put on ‘jankers’ would have to go and scrub all the white paint off with a tooth-brush! They’d have to get it all black again! It would take you about seven days to complete it — it was grueling to say the least!

Finally I got posted to a regiment in Canterbury called ‘The Buffs’. I got sent to India from here — we were sent on a boat called the Winchester Castle. It took us four weeks to finally land in Bombay. From here we went to a place called Kalian. Although the war was going on, the British government still had problems in the British Raj as well. There was a lot of conflict in the India at the time between Muslims and Hindu’s. Also India was a very important region as it was an area that could easily be used by the Japanese. British troops were sent there to prevent this from happening.

I was posted into the King’s Royal Rifles. It was mainly policing jobs — we had to make sure that the problems between the Muslims and Hindu’s didn’t explode, as this could have caused big problems. If there was any trouble we would have to patrol. I remember when I was in Calcutta if there was any problems people would start throwing stones at us while we were patrolling. The Indian Magistrate would walk in front, and when we were given the command we’d fire.

I was actually in India during VE day — we only celebrated it in the army camps. I knew then that it wouldn’t be long before I was sent home again. When my ‘demob’ number came up, I was finally sent home back to my family.

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